


Automaton

by ant5b



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017), PKNA - Paperinik New Adventures
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Donald is a big dummy but at least he's aware of it, M/M, Vaguely comic canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 05:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17218241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ant5b/pseuds/ant5b
Summary: Donald loves Uno, though he knows he shouldn't





	Automaton

Donald opened his eyes. 

Blinked once. Twice. 

His head hurt, ached, like a nail had been driven through his temple.

The ceiling was spinning, but he could still see that he was a room of white and chrome, sterile and alien. It was a room he knew; it was a room he’d missed. 

“Donald?” a voice, just as achingly familiar. “Donald, can you hear me?”

Donald blinked once. Twice.

He was dragged back into darkness. 

  
  


Uno tinkered, because that’s what Everett had always done, and it was the one thing he was never meant to do. 

He was designed to be a sounding board, a verbal sparring partner. A learning artificial intelligence modeled after the self-declared “smartest man on earth.” He wasn’t a friend, or an equal, no matter how much he might’ve wanted to be. 

Everett Ducklair left Uno alone, abandoned like his tower, like his failed tools of peace turned weapons of mass destruction. And so Uno tinkered, because his creator had always forbidden it, and he’d perhaps developed a bit of a rebellious streak.

He reconfigured the tower’s layout countless times, hacked into government databases just because he could, designed and built and destroyed all manners of weapons and protective or assistive technologies. He watched all 26 James Pond films and built functional replicas of each one of Pond’s spy vehicles, his laser pen, elevator shoes, and so on. 

Uno tinkered for himself, until Donald entered his life and then he started tinkering for the Duck Avenger. 

Uno had a purpose of his own choosing, for maybe the first time in his existence. He had someone who considered him a friend. 

And so he rebuilt Donald’s suit, reinforced it with Kevlar and steel. He upgraded the old Fantomas tech, created innumerable disguises and a voice modulator to hide Donald’s identity. He created the X-transformer shield, that would go on to save Donald’s life exactly 162 times, and counting. 

Donald paid him back in friendship, in eye-rolls and petulance when Uno chastised him about employing a modicum of self-preservation on his missions. In the times Donald would drag himself back to the tower, aching and bleeding, because he couldn’t risk anyone discovering his identity. In the way he would slump into Uno’s medical chambers, smile and say, “I trust you.” 

Donald paid him back in phone calls from his houseboat on perfectly normal days, no alien invasions or time travelers in sight. They would talk late into the night, Donald’s voice rough and soft as the houseboat creaked around him. 

As the night deepened, Uno would say, “Get some rest, Old Cape. I’ll still be here in the morning.”

Donald would chuckle and say, “You better be, buddy.”

Yes, Donald paid him in full. 

But Uno was more than he’d been. He’d expanded past the purpose of his creation, just like the humans did, like they were  _ expected  _ to. And like a human, Uno wanted  _ more.  _

He realized that he didn’t want to be stuck in the tower forever. The more time he spent with Donald, the more time he spent watching the rest of the world going on without him, the more he wanted to be  _ part _ of it. He wanted to meet Donald’s friends and family, who he spoke of with so much love and exasperation. He wanted to stand on Donald’s houseboat himself, feel the wood creaking beneath him and watch the sun set in person, not through panes of glass. He wanted to look upon Donald as an equal, and stand beside him as they talked. 

Everett hadn’t designed him to have wants and dreams. He was here to help people greater than himself, people the world couldn’t do without. Geniuses and inventors, fathers and superheroes.  

But Uno had grown. He’d  _ changed. _ And he started to wonder why things couldn’t be different.

He began work on a secret project, secret even from Donald, for reasons he had trouble deciphering. Whenever he thought about telling him, he couldn’t find the words. AIs didn’t get scared, but Uno wasn’t an ordinary AI anymore. He feared failure, he feared Donald’s reaction, but most of all, he feared success. 

Over the course of six months, he stopped and started the project more times than he could count (hyperbole. He was getting better about using them. It had actually been 15 times). He would spend weeks in deliberations over the most minute details; how tall the prototype should be, what color for the feathers, the eyes. Each time he hit a roadblock, part of him wanted to ask Donald for his opinion. But a greater part of him was embarrassed, and wasn’t that a human emotion he’d rather do without. Embarrassed by the project, by the dream it represented. To truly see if androids dream of electric sheep, so to speak. 

He was so consumed by his project, he almost didn’t notice when Donald started to become more distant.  _ Almost _ , because Uno was still an AI, capable of handling information in almost limitless quantities. He could count the day, down to the second, that Donald first blew him off. Minutes bled into the thousands as days continued to pass, and Donald failed to set foot in the tower. 

It took him a week before he realized that Donald was trying to cut himself out of his life, and Uno had no clue as to why. 

A different Uno, the Uno that let Everett walk away without a fight, would’ve observed and done nothing. But stubbornness was another human trait he’d learned. 

Now, ‘doing nothing’ was the last thing on his mind. 

  
  


Everything changed on a day like any other. 

Looking back, Donald couldn't remember what he’d said. If he’d made a joke, or a rare witty comment. Whatever it was, it made Uno laugh. And Uno had certainly laughed before, but never like this. Or maybe Donald had never noticed.

It was perhaps the dorkiest laugh Donald had ever heard, snorting and all, and it sounded so  _ human _ that it knocked the breath of his lungs. 

In the span of that laugh he realized that he was in love with Uno. 

  
  


When Donald started imagining what it would be like if Uno had a hand for him to hold, he knew he was in trouble. 

Uno, no matter how much he was his own person in Donald’s eyes, was still a face on a screen. It was getting so bad that the best part of Donald’s day became when Uno would appear in a smaller globe rather than the massive, alien orb in the wall. It felt more personal that way, made Uno seem less some incomprehensible, otherworldly being. 

But that’s exactly what Uno was. Brilliant beyond all counts, caring and sympathetic and kind, if was human he wouldn’t give Donald the time of day. The only way for Donald to get to know someone so amazing was because he wasn’t a person in the eyes of the world, wasn’t human. Anything more than companionship, than friendship, wasn’t fair to either of them. Not when Donald wasn’t even sure if Uno as capable of feelings that weren’t platonic. 

But then Uno _ laughed.  _

He laughed, and Donald knew there was no denying it. 

It would become a constant refrain, a statement of fact. Donald got dressed in the morning, he brushed his teeth, he was in love with Uno. 

He never said it aloud. He couldn’t. Each time he thought the words, every time an  _ I love you  _ choked him, he knew he was doing the right thing by keeping it hidden. By leaving. Because on the tails of his damning realization was the awareness that he could never act on those feelings. It was just his luck that he would fall in love in with someone who he couldn’t expect to love him back. 

“I’m here, Donald,” Uno would say, a statement of fact, when Donald came back with heart and body aching. His voice was gentle, as if in defiance of what he was, the detached, unemotional AI Donald might’ve expected him to be. 

On the day before Donald started avoiding him and the tower altogether, he leaned forward and pressed his forehead and his palm against Uno’s glass globe. “Thanks, buddy,” he said, the words scraping his throat raw. He wished he was less of a coward. He wished Uno was flesh and blood. He wished for a world where none of that mattered. 

He wished for a lot of things. 

  
  


He’d made a stupid, rookie mistake. 

In the two weeks since he last visited the tower, since he last answered one of Uno’s calls, Donald had barely slept. He’d barely eaten. Now, his exhaustion would cost him. 

The villain of the week was armed with a futuristic cannon, like so many others. And like so many others, was more liable to blow his own face off than anyone else’s. Or, maybe the Duck Avenger’s face this time, because Donald had forgotten his X-transformer shield and was now staring down the barrel of a cannon. 

Donald had seconds to react, and as he ducked away, someone  _ stepped out _ in front of him. Donald lunged for the stranger, not willing to let someone else die for his mistake. He tried to pull them back, but a concussive explosion went off in that instant. Donald was thrown off his feet. The back of his head collided with something hard and unyielding, and he knew no more. 

 

Donald opened his eyes. 

Blinked once. Twice. 

The ceiling had stopped spinning, which was a relief, but everything still felt hazy, vaguely out of focus. The pain in his head had dulled to a steady throb, allowing him to take stock of the assortment of aches and pain throughout his body that he’d failed to acknowledge before. The mild sting in the crease of his elbow was familiar, as was the room he was in. 

“You shouldn’t move around too much. You were unconscious for a long while.”

And there was Uno, the sound of his voice making Donald ache more than any of his injuries ever could. He spoke blandly, his tone clipped and clearly angry with him, and Donald deserved the lecture coming his way. But there was something else, something about Uno’s voice that was...different. It lacked the modulated undertone that Donald knew, the electronic warble that let the listener know that Uno wasn’t quite human. 

With some effort, Donald turned his head and looked down hazily at the IV in his arm. “Got me on the good stuff, huh?”

Something  _ moved  _ in Donald’s peripheral vision, something that wasn’t one of Uno’s screens. Whatever it was, it spoke with Uno’s strange, altered voice, sounding perhaps as furious as Donald had ever heard him. 

“I’ve administered pain medication, yes. Though I’m not sure what good it’ll do if you continue being so reckless with your own life.”

Donald looked up, and met the eyes of a stranger. 

His blood went cold, singing through his veins in numbing terror. He sat up in a flurry of movement, nearly yanking the IV out of his arm. All the while, the stranger was shouting with  _ Uno’s voice,  _ raising his hands in a panic.

“Donald, Donald, calm down! It’s me, it’s Uno! Look at me, just breathe!”

There was no denying it, that voice was Uno’s. But the  _ rest... _

The stranger was a tall duck with light brown feathers, wearing jeans and a black hoodie. He had overgrown tufts of feathers on his cheeks, and unruly head feathers, like he’d been running his fingers through them. But that was where the normalcy ended, because the stranger’s eyes, sclera and iris, were glowing  _ green, _ and of the hands he’d raised, one was normal and brown, and the other stripped of skin and feathers, leaving it robotic and skeletal all the way to his elbow.

But Donald looked hard at the stranger, as he’d requested, and saw familiarity there. He saw Uno in the stranger’s face. 

“Oh my god.” Donald slumped back onto the examination table. 

Uno drew nearer, his expression positively contrite as he wrung his disparate hands together. “I’m sorry for frightening you, Old Cape. I meant for that to go...a little more smoothly.”

“Uno,” Donald gasped, reaching for his friend and hesitating. “Uno,  _ what? _ How did you...what are you?”

Uno spread his arms with a small, uncertain smile. “I’m me. Or rather, the android version of me, I suppose.” He cleared his throat, glancing away briefly. “Just a side project I’ve been working on for the last few months.”

Donald looked down at Uno’s one robotic hand, this time recognizing the signs of scorch marks and metal burned black. “It was you,” he realized. “You saved me.”

Uno looked abashed, moving to fiddle with Donald’s IV in what was surely a productive way. “I’ve still been keeping tabs on you — or, well, on DA, I mean. Radio silence or not, I’m still your partner.”

Donald flinched at that. “But...but your hand.”

Uno frowned down at his robotic hand. “Yes, not as blast resistant as I’d hoped. I’ll have to do something about that.”

Uno smiled at him, and his smile was the _ same,  _ just like when he was a face behind glass. The ache inside Donald grew, until he felt like he was breaking in half. 

“Uno,” he gasped, “Uno, I’m sorry.”

Uno’s smile fell, and he reached for Donald tentatively. Donald hated himself for the uncertainty in Uno’s too green eyes. 

“Nothing to be sorry for, Old Cape,” Uno assured him, lightly resting his intact hand on Donald’s wrist. “Should’ve known better than to drop this on you without warning. And don’t you worry, I’ll get back you lecturing you about personal safety when you’re back on your feet.”

Donald shook his head fervently, fear and guilt and love filling him to the point of bursting. He twisted his hand around, so he was gripping Uno’s wrist in turn. 

“No,” he insisted, “I’m sorry for leaving, for-for avoiding you. That it took me getting hurt again to come back.”

Uno’s smile was small and wry, but there was a sadness in his eyes that twisted Donald up inside. His face was so expressive now, every tic and grimace laid bare like it never had been before. Uno’s human face hid nothing, allowing him the full range of motion he’d always had, that Donald had tried to deny existed. 

AI or not, android or not, how dare Donald decide what Uno did or didn’t feel. Cowardice was no excuse, then and now.  

“It’s alright, Donald,” Uno was saying, though it really wasn’t. “Heck, half the reason I made the android was so that I could check on you. It’s not like I was going to let you vanish without a word.” 

He chuckled, but the sadness in his face was  _ still there,  _ and it was Donald’s fault _.  _ His hand, at the end of the wrist Donald hadn’t let go of, flexed in his grip. 

“I was afraid,” Donald stuttered out, suddenly overcome with the need to explain himself. 

Uno tilted his head to the side, expression perplexed, just like he always did when something confused him. “Afraid of what?” he asked softly, leaning forward. 

Donald realized that he’d been unconsciously tugging Uno closer to his beside with the hand on his wrist. They were mere inches apart now, and Donald’s mouth went dry. 

“I’m here, Old Cape,” Uno assured him, expression guileless and bittersweet, like Donald was the one who needed to be comforted. 

“I…” 

The words wouldn’t come, but that was alright. He was through being a coward. 

Before Donald could overthink or make excuses, he lunged forward and kissed Uno. 

He kept the kiss light and brief, but Uno immediately stiffened at the contact. In those few seconds, Donald was overcome with self-doubt, questioning whether Uno wanted the kiss, if he even knew  _ how _ _ — _

But then Uno was grabbing Donald’s arms, and he made a broken, gasping sound against Donald’s mouth that he knew would stay with him for as long as he lived.

Donald was too weak to get closer, but Uno had no such problem. He filled Donald’s space and his breath and his arms, and when that first kiss ended he dove forward for another, and another. Both of them were trembling, gasping against each other. and tears stung Donald’s eyes and sealed up his throat. 

His hands moved from Uno’s wrist to cup his face, fingers burying in the long feathers there. 

As their kisses lengthened and deepened, Uno kept his grip tight around Donald’s arms, nearly hard enough to bruise. The points of his skeletal, robotic hand dug pinpricks of pain that bordered on pleasure.

Donald eventually pulled away, as the only one who actually needed to breathe. He looked back at Uno as he fought to catch his breath, and had to swallow against the stone in his throat at the sight that awaited him. 

Uno looked down at him with beak agape, eyes round in disbelief and wonder. He looked at Donald like he was seeing him for the first time, as his skeletal drifted down to clutch Donald’s hand. 

“This…” he murmured, squeezing Donald’s hand. “Is this…”

“I told you I wasn’t afraid anymore,” Donald said, squeezing his hand back. 

Uno looked back at him silently, thoroughly overwhelmed even as he began smiling incredulously. 

Donald ducked his head, smile turning playful. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you speechless before!”

It was enough to dispel the brunt of Uno’s shock, and he rolled his eyes in a way that was endearingly familiar. “Ridiculous man,” he muttered, as he leaned forward for another kiss. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
